Volume Number: 20 (2004)
Issue Number: 4
Column Tag: Programming

Untangling the Web

by Kevin Hemenway, Windusrtian Tarutaru

Database Modification with a GUI

For the past three or four issues, we've been exploring the MySQL database server: how to create databases, database users and their permissions, as well as how to access data from the mysql command line shell, and the Perl and PHP programming languages. In our journeys, we've also seen numerous examples of how to insert, modify, select, and delete data using the Structured Query Language (SQL).

Now that we've got some initial grounding in the manual way of doing things, we can take a brief tour of how to accomplish things visually instead. The two visual tools we present in this article, CocoaMySQL and phpMyAdmin, are roughly equivalent to the included mysql shell: you'll still need to know some SQL to get the most use out of them.

The first utility we'll look at is CocoaMySQL from http://cocoamysql.sf.net/. It's own description is succinct enough: CocoaMySQL is an application used to manage MySQL databases (locally or over the internet). It lets you add and remove databases and tables, change fields and indexes, view and filter the content of tables, add, edit and remove rows, perform custom queries and dump tables or entire databases. When you open CocoaMySQL, first time or not, you'll always be prompted for your database settings (Figure 1).

For our Host, we'll use "127.0.0.1" (or "connect to the MySQL server on this machine"), and you can leave Socket blank. User and Password could be one of two things: the root user created when we first installed MySQL, or the specific username and password of the database we've been fiddling with. If you choose to access your MySQL server as the root user, you can leave the Database field blank, as you'll be able to choose from a master list of databases (via the dropdown menu on the left side of Figure 1). You can also ignore the Database entry entirely: a lesser-privileged MySQL user would be given only a list of databases they have permission to (for example, leaving User and Password blank would give you access to the MySQL test database created during installation). If you'd like to connect to a specifically named database, have a blast doing so. You can save your settings by choosing the "Favorites" dropdown and then "Save to favorites..."

Figure 2 shows us connected as the davemarksman user to the mactech database. The list of database tables is shown on the left hand side, and the currently selected person table is described in the right hand pane. Depending on the level of access your MySQL user has, you'd be able to add, modify, or delete rows, as well as indexes, for this particular table.

Particularly handy are two of our toolbar buttons. "Optimize Table" will do as it suggests: some housekeeping to keep tables that have a regular (and healthy) flow of row updates. The MySQL documentation suggests you'd only need to do this once a week or month for the heaviest of database tables, but if you're in CocoaMySQL on a regular basis, it's hard not to flick a click in its general direction. Our neighbor, "Create Table Syntax", simply spits out the raw SQL used to create the currently selected table (Figure 3). You may not find yourself using this button a lot, but it's far quicker than issuing the SQL manually.

You'll also notice another handy feature of CocoaMySQL: the console, enabled with the "Show Console" toolbar button (see Figure 3). It keeps a running log of every SQL statement you've issued during your mousing with the GUI. This becomes very useful and instructional when you're still a SQL neophyte.

Let's choose the "books" table from our "Tables" menu, and click on the "Content" tab of our right-hand pane. You'll see a list of all the data within that table (Figure 4). You can rearrange the width of the columns as you see fit, but be forewarned that these visual-only preferences will be lost when you quit CocoaMySQL. You also have the ability to more narrowly determine what content you'd like to see with the forms above the data field: choose the table field to search through, the type of evaluation (context-sensitive, it'll change depending on whether the field is an integer or string), and the desired match.

Unfortunately, you can't create AND/OR queries here; instead, you'd use the "Custom Query" tab, as shown in Figure 5. Previously entered custom queries are selectable from a dropdown, can be saved as "Favorites", and SQL errors are displayed on screen. It'd be nice if a future version of CocoaMySQL could allow multiple conditions under the "Content" tab, but for those that know SQL already, we'll get by with the "Custom Query" tab instead.

CocoaMySQL can also export entire databases in one of three formats: raw SQL (for when you want to dump the entire database, and then import it elsewhere), and comma-separated or XML for entire tables, groups of tables, or a custom query. The XML export, buzzwordy enough to satisfy feature gluts, is a wrapper for the same feature through the mysql shell:

~ > mysql -X -e "select * from books" mactech
<?xml version="1.0"?>

<resultset statement="select * from books">
  <row>
        <id>9</id>
        <title>Spidering Hacks</title>
        <publication>2003-11-01</publication>
  </row>

  <row>
        <id>10</id>
        <title>Mac OS X Hacks</title>
        <publication>2003-04-01</publication>
  </row>

  <row>
        <id>13</id>
        <title>Object Oriented Perl</title>
        <publication>2000-00-00</publication>
  </row>

  <row>
        <id>14</id>
        <title>MySQL</title>
        <publication>1999-01-01</publication>
  </row>

  <row>
        <id>15</id>
        <title>PHP and MySQL Web Development</title>
        <publication>2003-00-00</publication>
  </row>
</resultset>

If there's one major drawback of CocoaMySQL, it's that you have to be using Mac OS X. When you desperately need a quick and dirty piece of data, you'll probably be using something downright distasteful. phpMyAdmin (http://phpmyadmin.sf.net/) is a web-based solution that can be accessed from everywhere you want to be, and on whatever OS you happened to be saddled with. It's also one of those applications that can cause some quizzical misgivings until you become familiar with it.

To install phpMyAdmin, download and extract the latest version (2.5.6 as of this writing) into /Library/WebServer/Documents/phpMyAdmin/. Open config.inc.php in your favorite editor and modify the $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] to contain your MySQL root password. Also take a look at the surrounding configuration values and set them as appropriate: the host and PmaAbsoluteUri are especially relevant (for our purposes here, simply inserting the root password will work well enough). Finally, load http://127.0.0.1/phpMyAdmin in your browser to display Figure 6.

phpMyAdmin provides an insane amount of features in regards to database manipulation and analysis: you'll do yourself some good to familiarize yourself with the available documentation. For now, choose the mactech database from the left-handed dropdown menu, and you'll be shown something similar to Figure 7.

As previously alluded, it is very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of options available. Naturally, things will start falling into place if you use phpMyAdmin often enough, but until then, all the icons have tooltips, all the errors have clickable explanations, and most of the worrisome options have "are you sure?" Javascript confirmations. Figure 8, accessible by clicking the "Properties" icon of a table, is similar to the table display of CocoaMySQL's Figure 2, and Figure 9 (the "Browse" tab) is equivalent to the listing of CocoaMySQL's Figure 4.

And thus completes our dissertation on basic database access with MySQL, the shell, PHP, Perl, CocoaMySQL, phpMyAdmin, and OS X. Helpful? Useless? Lacking? Confusing? Want more? Have questions? Next month, we'll be starting a new breed of Untangling the Web articles, but until then...

Email your suggestions, thoughts and comments to

editor-in-chief@mactech.com.

Kevin Hemenway, coauthor of Mac OS X Hacks and Spidering Hacks, is better known as Morbus Iff, the creator of disobey.com, which bills itself as "content for the discontented." Publisher and developer of more home cooking than you could ever imagine (like the popular open-sourced aggregator AmphetaDesk, the best-kept gaming secret Gamegrene.com, the ever ignorable Nonsense Network, etc.), he's currently a more-than-eighth level RDM on the Phoenix server. Contact him at morbus@disobey.com.